Frequently asked questions

Connecting to Kiwi 4 is a bit tricky for the first time.
Basically the reader can run in two different modes: Smartphone mode and Self-run mode. In order for the reader to work with RaceChrono, you’ll need to switch it to the Smartphone mode. Rather than having a physical switch, the manufacturer has opted to have you do the following:
1) Install the Kiwi OBD app
2) Open the Kiwi app, connect with it, and then configure everything, including vehicle details and passcodes
3) Only then you can switch the reader to Smartphone mode
After you’ve switched to the Smartphone mode, RaceChrono should be able to connect to from now on. If you have no use for the Self-run mode, I’d recommend buying the cheaper Kiwi 3 instead, as you do not need to configure it.

The OBD-II standard became mandatory in 1996 for cars sold in US market, 2001 for cars sold in EU market and 2008 for cars sold in the Chinese market. So if you have earlier car, or car sold in other market, please search the internet that it really is supported before you purchase the OBD-II reader.

On iOS:OBDLink MX+ Bluetooth: Super fast update rate, on a modern car up-to 50 Hz. Has a power saving feature, so it won’t drain your battery if you leave the adapter connected, and a physical button for pairing as a security measure. NOTICE: You’ll need to buy the one with ‘+’ at the end of the model name for iOS, the others will not work. This model has replaced the MX Wi-Fi adapter.KiWi 3: Not too impressive update rate at 10-15 Hz, but it connects using Bluetooth LE, which means zero user action needed to connect when starting sessions. This also leaves your Wi-Fi available to control other devices, such as your GoPro action camera. Kiwi 4 will work as well, but read this before you buy.Carista Bluetooth OBD2: Affordable alternative, update rate at 10-15 Hz, connects using Bluetooth LE.

On Android:OBDLink LX Bluetooth, MX Bluetooth or MX+ Bluetooth: Super fast update rate, on a modern car up-to 50 Hz. Has a power saving feature, so it won’t drain your battery if you leave the adapter connected, and a physical button for pairing as a security measure.Carista Bluetooth OBD2: Affordable alternative, update rate at 10-15 Hz, connects using Bluetooth LE.

There’s many more adapters that will work, but the ones mentioned are the ones I’d buy. Notice the data rates mentioned are shared between the logged channels. So if you need to log 3 channels, and your adapter achieves 15 Hz update rate, it means it’s 5 Hz update rate per channel.

On iOS:

Dual XGPS 160: In my opinion the best option currently. It’s 10 Hz and supports GLONASS satellites.Qstarz BL-1000GT: This is Qstarz’s first receiver with iOS support. It’s very accurate and runs at 10 Hz. More expensive than XGPS 160 though.VBOX Sport: Great option if you have more to spend. Runs at 20 Hz. Make sure to get the external antenna.Garmin GLO and GLO 2: Great accuracy and affordable, but it must be connected through iOS Bluetooth settings, and you’ll get only 3-4 Hz update rate in iOS.

Notice: Popular Bluetooth GPS receivers like Qstarz BT-Q818XT/X and similar will not work on iOS.

On Android:

Garmin GLO and GLO 2: In my opinion the best option currently. You’ll get 7-8 Hz update rate and supports GLONASS satellites with great accuracy. The only difference between GLO and GLO 2 seems to be that the GLO 2 keeps connection more reliably with new Samsung phones. Notice: You will need to upgrade GLO 2 to firmware 2.10 or later, using the Garmin WebUpdater on Mac or Windows, otherwise it will not connect with most Android phones.Dual XGPS 160: Not quite as accurate as Garmin GLO, but its 10 Hz and supports GLONASS satellites.Qstarz BL-1000GT: Works great with Android too. It’s very accurate and runs at 10 Hz. More expensive than Garmin GLO though.VBOX Sport: Great option if you have more to spend. Runs at 20 Hz. Make sure to get the external antenna.

You can make the Start/Finish line wider, but lap time accuracy will be poor for the laps that are not detected with normal 50-75 meter wide trap. RaceChrono will calculate the laps again when you edit the track, so you will get lap times even for your existing sessions.

Here’s the process:

1) Open your session, press the round “track” button

2) If your track is downloaded from, or submitted to the Track Library; you will need create a copy of it first: tap the copy button on top of the screen

3) Tap the Start/finish trap marker

4) Tap the edit button on bottom of the screen

5) Tap the width icon on top right of the screen

6) Scale the width of trap to make it wide enough to cover trajectories from all laps

It could be two things; bad GPS signal or invalid Start/Finish line placement.

Check for bad GPS signal: Open your session and tap the round “Route” button to open analysis of your session. Make sure the graph and map are visible. Scroll the graph to left, while looking at the map. Do the trajectories on the map go on the track or near it within maybe 20 meters? If the trajectories are all over the place, and they do not resemble the real traveled path, then you have bad GPS signal.How to improve: You must keep the phone in clear view to the sky. If you’re using the internal GPS on your phone, then you must keep your phone in a phone holder – it will not work from your pocket! Best places for the GPS or the phone are on dashboard near the windshield of your car, or the tail section of your motorbike furthest away from the rider. External Bluetooth GPS is needed if you want to keep the phone in your pocket. An external GPS is recommended for anything else than casual use of the app.

Check for Start/Finish line placement: Open the analysis same as above, and while scrolling the graph look for the crossing of the Start/Finish line. It is a red line with and arrow. The trajectory on the map should pass through the Start/Finish line, to the direction of the red arrow. If the direction is wrong, or the trajectory goes past the trap, your laps will not register.How to improve: You can either create a completely new track with correct traps, or make a copy of the current track and edit the traps that are incorrectly placed.

The position and speed reported by GPS is not always correct. It’s normal to be off-road, and having incorrect speed displayed occasionally. If your recorded path goes off-road by a lot near Start/Finish line, it will not be registered and will cause two laps to be “joined” as one.

The data accuracy is about the GPS satellite reception; the better the reception (and the receiver itself) is, the more accurate the logged data is. There’s also quite a few circuits that are really difficult for the GPS receivers, such as the Nordschleife in Germany, where are trees and hills blocking the view to horizon and the satellites. You should expect at least some data accuracy problems in places like that.

The GPS reception can be improved by careful placement of the GPS receiver. If you’re using the internal GPS on your phone, the first step would be to install the phone to a phone holder, so that there is clear view to sky from the phone. The internal GPS does not work properly, or not at all, if the phone is in your pocket, passenger seat or glove compartment.

Second thing you might try, especially if the first step does not improve the situation, would be to purchase an external GPS. See the recommended devices in this FAQ: “Which GPS receiver should I buy?”.

RaceChrono currently supports all Bluetooth LE (or Bluetooth Smart) heart rate monitors, that follow the HRM profile defined in the Bluetooth standard. RaceChrono is currently being tested using the Suunto SMART Sensor, but others will likely work too.

Unfortunately this is not possible. The purchases are transferable between devices with the same Play Store account or App Store account, but not between accounts.

There are technical reasons and contract reasons:

1) License systems in iTunes App Store and Play Store are completely separate, and not in control of the app developer who doesn’t even see who has purchased the app. He sees only transactions with vague location, used payment method and amount.

2) Both stores require in their contracts, that not a single app is sold without them getting their fee. So even if there was a way to transfer licenses, it would not be allowed.

Unfortunately due to spammers, e-mail does not work too well. Please check your spam folder. If the confirmation is in your spam folder, please mark it NOT SPAM, to help the spam filter to right direction for future email exchange.

Also make sure you entered a valid e-mail address. I see often typos in the addresses of bounced e-mails, such as “@hotmail.con”…

Then there’s the less common case where emails cannot be sent at all, due to RaceChrono’s mail server being blocked. Feel free to contact us through support page if your problem is not solved.

My aim is to answer all support requests within 36 hours. Usual response time is within 24 hours. Sometimes the recipient email address is invalid, and sometimes the request is just lost. Please re-send if no response within acceptable time.

Unfortunately due to spammers, e-mail does not work too well. Please check your spam folder for response from RaceChrono team, before resending your request. If the response is in your spam folder, please mark it NOT SPAM, to help the spam filter to right direction for future email exchange.

Yes you can connect your DIY-devices through Bluetooth RFCOMM, with special $RC2 and $RC3 data formats. The device you need to select in RaceChrono settings is “RaceDAC” or “RaceDAC with GPS” depending if you mix $GPxxx sentences in the data stream or not. This protocol is currently supported in RaceChrono Pro for Android only, unfortunately not in iOS. This is because iOS does not support Bluetooth RFCOMM.

Notice: If you’re not using mixed $GPxxx sentenced, a steady update rate is needed for this format due to the algorithm that RaceChrono uses to synchronize with GPS time. So pick update rate that is close as possible to 1/5/10/20/30/40/50/100 Hz. If you have to skip an update due to data overflow, make sure you add the ‘count’ field even for the skipped updates.

This web site and product support is dedicated for RaceChrono mobile apps only. The RaceChrono touchscreen hardware project was a collaboration between Roost Industries and RaceChrono Oy. The device’s software was developed by RaceChrono Oy, and it was based on the first generation of RaceChrono (the Symbian version). The hardware, support and sales was done by Roost Industries. You may contact them with your issues.

Common issues for RaceChrono Pro for iOS users

This is because of the language settings on your phone. Normally if your phone language is not supported by RaceChrono, it will default to English. On iOS there is a “Preferred language order” that will override this behaviour: If your first preferred language is not supported by RaceChrono, the second language on that list will be selected, and so on. Make sure you have only the languages you want your apps to appear on that list. You can find the setting from Settings > General > Language & Region.

RaceChrono follows the language settings on your phone (See “Settings > General > Language & Region”). It will use the first language supported language in the “Preferred language order” setting. If none of the selected languages are supported, then English will be used.

So, if the app comes up with some “random” language, that is not what your phone is set to, but also not English, then you have this language in your “Preferred language order” setting. To fix this, remove any language from the list, that you do not want see your apps to appear in.

Some firmwares of Dual XGPS 160 have proven to have unreliable connection to iOS. Here’s a checklist for resolving the connection problems:

Reboot your iOS device and power cycle the XGPS. Sometimes the connection goes to invalid state and can only be resolved by rebooting. Always try this first.

Install ‘SkyPro GPS Status Tool’ app. Always try to connect with this app before blaming the third party apps. You can also try to update your GPS firmware with this app. As of writing this article, reliable firmwares according to my own tests are v1.5.1, v2.2.1, v2.4.1 and v3.4.0 depending on your hardware version.

Abrupt exits in iOS apps are crashes, which are caused by bugs in the app code. Fixing them is top priority, but to fix them we will need to know why it crashed. Here’s how to help to find the issue:

Please make sure your device is sharing crash reports with the app developers. Please enable the ‘Share with App Developers’ analytics option as described in https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202100. If the option was turned off, please try to make the app crash once more, to make the crash report available to us.

If the app is crashing on a particular session, please share the session as .rcz file (from the share button on top of session overview screen) and send it to tracks(at)racechrono.com

If the app is crashing for video export or analysis, please also share the raw video files linked to the session, via DropBox, Google Drive or similar, if possible.

Write a bug report using the support request form in http://racechrono.com/support/, describing the issue as well as possible, also mentioning your device model and iOS version.

There’s no option for Garmin GLO in RaceChrono settings, as it cannot be connected directly. You need to go to iOS Bluetooth settings, and pair and connect your Garmin GLO from there. These instructions also apply to connecting Garmin GLO 2.
In RaceChrono settings, enable Internal GPS. It will actually use any GPS that is connected through iOS location services. Then you are ready to start your session.

Open your device details, from the red or green round button on the recording screen, to verify that the data is received from your Garmin GLO.

If it says 1 Hz it’s recording the internal GPS. If it says anything more than 2 Hz, it it already recording data from your Garmin GLO.

Common issues for RaceChrono and RaceChrono Pro for Android users

This is a known bug in the Samsung S3’s GPS firmware (running Android 4.3). Android’s Location API outputs this obviously invalid date; it is not misinterpreted by the RaceChrono app. For instance in April 17th 2019, the Samsung S3 GPS reported September 1st 1999…

There’s three options how to “fix” this:

a) Ignore the wrong date, it is a bit of annoying, but the app still works…
b) Get an external Bluetooth GPS
c) Update your phone to newer model

This is a bug with latest version of RaceChrono on phones with Android 8.0 or later. Issue is being investigated and it will be fixed eventually. At least Samsung S7 Active with Android 8.0.0 is affected. For now do this as temporary work-around fix: RaceChrono > Settings > Expert settings > Camera API version > API v1. It will fix the issue for new sessions. If you are affected by this problem, please contact RaceChrono support and send your device details, it will help us to keep track of this issue.

You can either request a refund through Play Store (there is a button if you are within the refund window), or request a refund directly from us through the feedback form (you will need to attach the Transaction ID from your receipt!). We will accept refunds requests that are within reasonable time after the purchase.

Android system will report a “Couldn’t pair with (your device name) because of an incorrect PIN or passkey”, if the system cannot automatically pair with your new Bluetooth device, when RaceChrono connects to it when starting a new session for the first time.

Your device may have a button that needs pressed to allow pairing (for example on OBDLink LX and MX). Press that button and your device should now connect. You need to do this only once, after which the device is paired, and will connect automatically the next time.

If that does not work for you, you can also go to Android’s Bluetooth settings an pair the device manually, before starting a new session with RaceChrono. The device may request a PIN code that you have received from the device manufacturer, or just a default PIN such as 0000 or 1234.

1) Uninstall “Bluetooth GPS” app if you installed it (according to Garmin instructions). You do not need it with RaceChrono, and in fact it obstructs RaceChrono from directly connecting to your GPS receiver.

The ‘Pro upgrade’ in-app-purchase for RaceChrono for Android will activate immediately after the purchase. The application name (and icon) will remain as RaceChrono, and will not change to RaceChrono Pro, but the app features will upgrade 100% to ones of RaceChrono Pro. There’s no difference in features. The upgrade is activated, if the ‘Pro upgrade’ item in the upgrade screen says ‘Bought!’.

That said, there’s couple of things to consider.

1) When you change phones, or want to install on your secondary device, make sure you install the RaceChrono app, not the RaceChrono Pro app. It will upgrade automatically, as it did for the first time.

2) You need to have same Play Store account on all of the devices where you want to use RaceChrono on.

3) If you just made the purchase on one phone, and do not get the upgrade immediately on your second device, you can reboot the second device and open the Play Store app. This is to update the inventory of purchased items. Also open (and re-open if needed) the Upgrade screen in RaceChrono to update the inventory. Your purchase should appear there eventually, and then your purchased items will say “Bought” on the button next to it.

4) If you have previously successfully activated Pro purchase and it has since become inactive, and cannot be activated by just rebooting, it maybe because of invalid state within Play Store app. You can do the following: 4.1) Clear all Play Store app data (not just the cache) from Android settings > Applications > Google Play Store > Storage > Clear data. Notice do not clear RaceChrono data, it will delete your sessions! 4.2) Reboot your phone 4.3) Open the Play Store app again, so that it restores all data and reloads the store 4.4) Open RaceChrono and go to upgrades screen 4.5) If Pro upgrade not yet activated, go back and repeat from 4.4 couple of times.

This error message is caused by failure to initialise the hardware codecs for video export. Usually the problem is that the source video files, or combination of main and picture-in-picture video files, are not supported by your device.

You might run in to this issue, if you have recorded high resolution videos with your action camera, and try to export them using a low end or mid-tier phone. Even some high end phones may fail, if you try to export a video with picture-in-picture with very high resolution sources.

Examples of device/video combinations that are known to fail:

– Samsung S6 using 2.7K or 4.0K main video with 1080p PIP video. It will work if both main and PIP videos are 1080p.

– Samsung Tab 3 10.1 using 1080p video source. The device has only 720p camera so the export will fail for anything more than that. You’ll need to use 720p video source.

To fix the issue you should try the following:

– Uncheck the “Use hardware acceleration” checkbox from the export screen. This will make the export slower, and you’ll loose the picture-in-picture option, but it will work regardless of the source video resolution.

– Record future videos with lower resolution

– Downscale your high-resolution source videos to lower resolution. You can do this with ffmpeg command line tool for example:ffmpeg -i SOURCE.MP4 -vf scale=1920:1080 -c:v libx264 -crf 14 -preset veryslow -c:a copy DOWNSCALED.MP4
This will downscale your video to 1080p. Edit the line for any other resolution you need. The DOWNSCALED.MP4 is filename of the downscaled video. Use original filenames and copy them to your phone, and always keep the original video for future use.

Here’s a short list of what you want to backup, especially if you want to uninstall the app, or factory reset your phone. Pro-tip: archive the files on source phone, and unarchive on target phone.; Transferring many single files over USB is notorious for causing corruption. I know this whole process should be a feature in the app. Will be at some point.

Notice: The /Android/data/com.racechrono.app (RaceChrono) and /Android/data/com.racechrono.pro (RaceChrono Pro) folders are deleted upon app’s uninstall. So if you uninstall, all your sessions and tracks (and raw videos on external storage) will be deleted. This has changed due to 3rd party cleanup apps, and even Samsung’s own apps, are known to delete the /RaceChrono/ folder on unprotected space that was used by prior versions.

Notice, if you ever need to uninstall RaceChrono the folder under /Android/data/com.racechrono.* is deleted upon app uninstall. Makes sense at least backup the RAW videos on external storage for Pro version. The /RaceChrono/ folder is not deleted but it makes sense to backup it frequently.

Once you purchase RaceChrono Pro, you are allowed to re-install again for free, even when you buy a new phone or install it on your second device.

If Play Store asks you to purchase again, you’ll need to check a couple of things to have it sorted:

1) Check your purchases from Google Payments. To view your Play Store payment history, you must be logged in with same Google account as on your phone. Look for RaceChrono purchase.

2) Make sure you have the same Google Account activated on your phone, as the one that you made the purchase with.

3) If your purchase says Pro upgrade (RaceChrono), it means you have purchased the Pro upgrade in-app-purchase on the RaceChrono app. You will need to install RaceChrono, not RaceChrono Pro. The Pro upgrade is then automatically activated. RaceChrono with Pro upgrade is 100% similar to the RaceChrono Pro app. Only difference are the name and the icon.

4) If your purchase says RaceChrono Pro, it means you have purchased the separate RaceChrono Pro app, and you should be able to install it from Play Store without additional payments.

If you’re still having problems, do not hesitate to create a support request!

Support request

Did you go through the tutorials and the frequently asked questions, and still need help? Please send us your support request with the form below. Alternatively can also register to our User forum and post your questions there!